Daily Reading – Monday, May 9, 2011
FT Alphaville: Kicking the Greek debt can further down the road
The price action in Greek government bonds on Monday morning…
Volatile huh? But probably unsurprising as we still don’t really know what was discussed at Friday’s mysterious meeting by eurozone finance ministers, or why the meeting was even held.
FT Alphaville: A (hard) Greek restructuring by the numbers
Or, losers in a Greek debt restructuring.
FT Alphaville: The underlying trend in UK house prices
Another day, another piece of gloomy data from the UK economy.
This time it’s real estate.
Calculated Risk: Employment: A comment on the Birth/Death Model
[A]nyone who adds (or subtracts) the Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA) birth/death model numbers from the headline SA payroll employment is clueless.
Zero Hedge: Silverfinger – The True Story Of Nelson Bunker Hunt
Over 30 years ago, a man by the name of Nelson Bunker Hunt hatched the perfect plan: protect his inherited wealth (which then was one of the largest legacy fortunes in the world) from the inflationary destruction of “paper” assets by converting his assets into silver, and in the process cover the silver market, and send the price of silver to an inflation adjusted price of over $140 (nearly three times higher than the nearly record nominal silver price hit last week). Understandably, Hunt’s name has appeared very often in the popular media in recent months, since after all it was the “Hunt” price that the May 1 silver smackdown (which will most certainly never be investigated) that sent silver from $48 to $42 in seconds that was being protected by the paper cartel. Yet just who is Nelson Bunker Hunt? And how did he cover the silver market when did? What exactly did he do, and is someone doing a comparable silver cornering right now? And, most importantly, why? The answers, all of which are provided in this September 1980 Playboy article reprint, will surprise and astound many, primarily due to the myriad parallels between the world of the 1970s and our own. What follows is one man’s attempt to escape from the “system.”
The Aleph Blog: Why Amateurs Should Invest in Common Stocks
After yesterday’s piece, I want to say that though most amateur investors do not beat index funds, there is still one big reason to buy individual common stocks: it can make you a better businessman.